(Newser)
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Everyone involved in the airline industry is "apoplectic" about a video showing passengers on an Emirates Airline flight that crash landed in Dubai on Wednesday grabbing their luggage before evacuating, even as the cabin fills with smoke, Bloomberg reports. Everyone successfully escaped before the plane burst into flames, but that's not the point. "Time was crucial, the plane exploded, thankfully after everyone was off, but it could have happened at any time," former flight attendant Bobby Laurie writes for Huffington Post. This isn't a unique case. Fleeing passengers have also ignored orders to leave their luggage in San Francisco, New York, and elsewhere. "When it's your money or your life, money wins," Bloomberg states.

And the thing is, people who stop to grab their bags when they should be running for their lives aren't just a danger to themselves. They create traffic jams that prevent others from evacuating. "The people behind you deserve a chance to escape too," tweets a flight attendant and author. Laurie, who was "infuriated" by the Dubai video, calls stopping for your luggage in an emergency "attempted homicide." Luggage can also puncture evacuation slides, making them unusable. A study from 2000 that looked at dozens of plane evacuations found nearly half of all people tried to take a bag. And two-thirds of all flight attendants involved said bags were a problem during the evacuation. The airline industry is considering possible solutions, including fines and locking overhead bins.

In most cases, emergency evacuations take place after a landing that starts out as routine but goes wrong somehow. That doesn't give the flight attendants any useful time to tell passengers not to take their luggage with them before all hell breaks loose.

Ezekiel 25:17

Aug 8, 2016 1:22 PM CDT

I only carry a soft duffel bag and you want me to carry it on exit. I've got radios in there that can help in a disaster. I've got a medic bag with numerous 4x4's and compression bandages. Most important, I've got my large turkey oven bags. If the cabin fills with toxic smoke, I can place a bag over my head and have 5-10 minutes of air to crawl my way to an exit row. I know where that exit row is because I already counted the rows when I sat down. If I counted 5, then including my row, it will be past 5. Now in that situation I won't tow the duffel. But in an orderly evac situation, I would and when I get to the ground, I'll start tending to the people who gashed themselves on something. I'll grab my radio and start finding the channel they are using beginning with 8-tac, v-tac, then u-tac.

Robert T

Aug 7, 2016 5:20 PM CDT

1: Overhead compartment that locks in the event of a crash. 2: Airline fairly compensates for value (up to X amount) of all baggage.